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Investments: Women are more cautious than men because they have less financial resources at their disposal

Experts on investments and financial products assume that women are less amenable to risks and therefore put their money into secure investment products. A current study conducted by the DIW Berlin (German Institute for Economic Research) challenges this view. The study demonstrates that men and women are equally likely to take a chance on risky investments - assuming that they have the same financial ...

Consistent estimation of the fixed effects ordered logit model

The paper considers panel data methods for estimating ordered logit models with individual-specific correlated unobserved heterogeneity. We show that a popular approach is inconsistent, whereas some consistent and efficient estimators are available, including minimum distance and generalized method-of-moment estimators. A Monte Carlo study reveals the good properties of an alternative estimator that ...

A Dynamic Hurdle Model for Zero-Inflated Count Data: With an Application to Health Care Utilization

Excess zeros are encountered in many empirical count data applications. We provide a new explanation of extra zeros, related to the underlying stochastic process that generates events. The process has two rates, a lower rate until the first event, and a higher one thereafter. We derive the corresponding distribution of the number of events during a fixed period and extend it to account for observed ...

Heterogeneity in the relationship between happiness and age: Evidence from the German Socio-Economic Panel

This paper studies the evolution of life satisfaction over the life course in Germany. It clarifies the causal interpretation of the econometric model by discussing the choice of control variables and the underidentification between age, cohort and time effects. The empirical part analyzes the distribution of life satisfaction over the life course at the aggregated, subgroup and individual level. To ...

Child Poverty during the Recession in Germany

The 2008 financial crisis triggered the worst global recession since the Great Depression. Many OECD countries responded to the crisis by reducing social spending. Through 11 diverse country case studies (Belgium, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom, and the United States), this volume describes the evolution of child poverty and material well-being during ...

Unlucky to Be Young? The Long-Term Effects of School Starting Age on Smoking Behaviour and Health

In this study, we analyse the long-term effects of school starting age on smoking behaviour and health in adulthood. School entry rules combined with birth month are used as an instrument for school starting age. The analysis adopts the German Socio-Economic Panel data and employs a fuzzy regression discontinuity design.

Reform of Income Splitting for Married Couples: Only Individual Taxation Significantly Increases Working Incentives

The joint taxation of married couples in Germany with full income splitting is still a major hindrance to the participation of married women in the labor market. In their current financial proposals, the SPD (Social Democratic Party) is calling for income splitting for married couples to be replaced by individual taxation with maintenance deductions, in accordance with existing schemes for divorced ...

Tax and Transfer System: Considerable Redistribution Mainly Via Social Insurance

Overall monetary redistribution via the tax and transfer system leads to net incomes being much more evenly distributed in Germany than market income. As a result, in 2011, the Gini coefficient decreased from 0.5 for market income to 0.29 for household disposable income. The social security system has a significant share in total income redistribution by the government, making up more than half of ...

Increasing the Value-Added Tax to Re-Finance a Reduction of Social Security Contributions? A behavioral microsimulation analysis for Germany

The Transmission of Educational Opportunities across three Generations - Prospects and Limits of the SOEP Data

In the last centuries, Germany has witnessed a remarkable educational expansion with a long-lasting dynamic. If the educational expansion in West Germany has gained such a momentum, it has to be proven empirically that the respective generation of parents - who themselves had profited from the educational expansion - pass on their (higher) educational aspirations to their children. In this paper, this ...